In the event of an impending global flu pandemic, vaccine production could quickly reach its limits, as flu vaccines are still largely produced in embryonated chicken eggs. Udo Reichl, Director at the Max ...

New diagnostic tests are needed to make vaccination against bovine tuberculosis (bovine TB) viable and the number of false positives from these tests must be below 15 out of every 10,000 cattle tested, according ...

Since the uptick in outbreaks of measles in the US, those arguing for the right not to vaccinate their children have come under increasing scrutiny. There is no journal of "anti-vax psychology" reporting ...

Scientists from the UK and US are using technology that helped in the design of a new synthetic vaccine to combat the foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) to now target the virus that causes polio. The synthetic ...

A new study by Kansas State University veterinary diagnosticians finds that pets with out-of-date rabies vaccinations are very unlikely to develop the fatal disease if given a rabies booster immediately after exposure to ...

Vaccines developed using proteins rather than live viruses can help protect animals and subsequently humans from insect-borne viruses, according to Alan Young, chief scientific officer for Medgene Labs, an ...

Recently published veterinary research at Iowa State University shows that influenza vaccines administered in the upper respiratory system of pigs are more effective in some key respects than standard vaccine injections.

A group of researchers from the University of Barcelona (Spain), the CNRS in Montpellier (France) and Princeton University (USA) report in The American Naturalist that the vaccination of females of a long ...

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists at the University of Wyoming hope their brucellosis studies may produce a better vaccine for livestock and are studying whether a change in vaccination ...

The control of certain childhood diseases is difficult, despite high vaccination coverage in many countries. One of the possible reasons for this is "imperfect vaccines," that is, vaccines that fail either due to "leakiness," ...

UCLA biochemists have created the largest-ever protein that self-assembles into a molecular "cage." The research could lead to synthetic vaccines that protect people from the flu, HIV and other diseases.

The strains of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) that infect adults and children in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, have notably similar toxins and virulence factors, according to research published ahead of print ...

Australian scientists said Wednesday they have successfully tested a vaccine against chlamydia in wild koalas, in what they believe is a breakthrough in combating the sexually-transmitted disease ravaging ...

Vaccine

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.

Vaccines can be prophylactic (e.g. to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by any natural or "wild" pathogen), or therapeutic (e.g. vaccines against cancer are also being investigated; see cancer vaccine).

The term vaccine derives from Edward Jenner's 1796 use of the term cow pox (Latin variolæ vaccinæ, adapted from the Latin vaccīn-us, from vacca cow), which, when administered to humans, provided them protection against smallpox.